Saturday, 1 November 2014

Halloween 31 For 31: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

From http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/pub-dom/imgs/cabinet-des-dr-caligari/cabinet-des-dr-caligari.JPG

Dir. Robert Wiene

The last review for the Halloween season...and with this I'm
stepping further than Wild Zero (1999)
into something I first saw, on a college campus, which has had a subconscious
effect on me. I was studying this film in fact in my Film Studies class alongside
Nosferatu (1922), a immense pair to
see, amongst other films, if there ever was one. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari has a weight to it that is utterly
profound. One of the first horror films, and such a drastic influence on what
was to come. The brilliance of it as a film is that, yet, the movie still feels
drastically unique compared to all that came after it in the same genre. In a
story within a story, Dr. Caligari (Werner
Krauss) arrives at a town with his carnival attraction, a somnambulist
named Caesar (Conrad Veidt). As
murders are taking place it's not long before the friend of the one of the victims
Francis (Friedrich Feher) suspects
that the two are involved somehow, a threat to the love of his life Jane Olsen
(Lil Dagover) significant. Immediately
the film stands out, for what is under the umbrella of German Expressionism, an
artistic style of multiple mediums that wanted to depicted the internal,
subconscious reality of the mind instead of realism. This was the context that
the film was being taught to us in Film Studies, so at the same time I was
being introduced to German Expressionism as well. Using hand made sets, the
world of Caligari's is an irregular,
distorted place, of angular, disturbed buildings, heavy use of blacks even for
a monochrome film, and claustrophobic interiors and urban streets where the
buildings seem to be leaning to each other. It's a depiction of a nightmare,
and what'll be more interesting for me to write of is what it was like to see
this for the first time in college. I was taken aback by it, fascinated by its
singular look, seeing the sense of the distorted portrayed fully. Even back
then, not able to appreciate films that alarmed and forced viewers into
unconventional and uncomfortable positions, Caligari was still able to succeed because its style translated all
the menace and unease required for its story to me, and would be able to for
any normal film goer, despite its age and potential technical limitations,
possessing a fully formed world.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0C6MGIpRoFE/T6KLLW5vuFI/AAAAAAAAK6g/9YZrY1gqP8I/s1600/cabinet-of-dr-caligari+bedroom.jpg

You can see the debt directors like Tim Burton have to this, but the film is still radically different,
viewing it again, from many films. Even against the couple German Expressionist
films I have seen its drastically different and goes further. There is still
something unnerving about The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari in mood because of its aesthetic and tone. A warped frame of
mind befitting the fact that the story-within-a-story is possibly up for
question, whose obvious artificiality makes it impossible for the film to be
absorbed and loosened of its effect. It's too menacing and dark still to be
digestible, to be the fun spookiness of Tim
Burton or as far as being defanged like a lot of older horror films. So
much so that, on a big screen, the little details are what build up the world
being depicted the most, even to how impractical the furniture looks to sit on
for characters, remoulded a person if they were to use them. Everything has a
connection to the aesthetic being used and, of course, being physically real,
the weight is felt. Unlike a Burton
as well, the small scale of the film gives them a better ability to draw you as
a viewer to the atmosphere.

From http://www.silveremulsion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/cabinetofdrcaligari_1.jpg

A person like me viewing this film is going to be pulled in
by how unconventional it is, and being a silent film adds to this factor. With
there being no onscreen dialogue at all, only inter titles, there is an
additional sense of the film taking place in a different reality. It actually
took me a long time, within the last few years in fact, to be able to fully
appreciate silent cinema, but back at college this film and Sergei Eisenstein'sStrike (1925), being taught in the same subject on Germany's and
the Soviet Union's radically different cinematic innovations in the twenties, immediately caught me because of their elaborate
and distinct use of the visuals. Caligari
is not a radically advanced film in terms of technique - the camera is static
each shot, editing basic, none of the complicated technique of D.W. Griffith that would become
mainstream or that of Soviet filmmakers whose editing is even more avant garde
now - but aesthetically its advanced. In its use of background and production design,
lighting, a scene where text appears in shot overlaid on the images and
generally pushing the look of cinema to express its nightmarish story of murder
and secrets. A film depicting less than a rational world, while it would
influence many films to come, and has a conventional mystery plot for the most
part in its core, it's style yet is completely at odds still with most cinema. Acting
and how actors are made up is also a factor in this, as German Expressionism
went for intentionally unrealistic and choreographed acting, characters
depicted with heavy makeup and acting more broadly than was already arch in
silent cinema to register meanings without access for sound.

From http://www.black-and-white-movies.com/images/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari-jail.jpg

Encountering a film like this, with an elaborate style, was
an eye opening experience. Famously, it's twist ending is just as immortalised,
a hackneyed plot twist in modern movies but here still an unsettling sting for
how old the film is, one of the first to do this, and for how in lieu of its
tone it works perfectly for the mood. I wouldn't be surprised if this film is
what got me hooked onto darker, more abstract films I have been covering for
this season and watch in general. Certainly watching it again, its captivating
still, an immense power to the content and images. The rawness of being an
early film in cinema's history with the sophistication of the content making it
still incredibly rewarding to watch.

From http://ufa-filmnaechte.de/fileadmin/user_upload/caligari_big_2.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

It would've been insane not to give this the highest rating.
Not only does it deserve it for being one of the first films to do many of the
things that make up this type of cinema - locations designed to match the
protagonist's state of mind, unconventional acting, the abnormal plot content
including madness and psychiatry, the twist ending - but it's still a very unconventional
film to this day. Its age in fact has added to this, a creation from another
era of cinema lost to us because of advancing technology but, made with hand
painted sets and a group of actors, its closed-in world is uniquely its own, graspable
as filming sets and a world familiar to us, but more disconnected from reality
at the same time.

From https://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0unetj4751qzdvhio1_500.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Pretty safe to say that this was one of the films that built
this blog and my entire interest in this sort of cinema in the first place,
leaving an imprint that has fed my imagination, which is immensely obvious now revisiting
the film. It's a representative, the best, for what this blog is meant to be,
the poster film above many others for what "Cinema of the Abstract"
is meant to mean. Films that you leave feeling you've stepped into another
world, which in this case was, fittingly, one of the films that did it first
and better than most of its offspring.

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.